


O, restless warrior

by haruun



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, M/M, Mild Angst, basically everything else will be added when they appear lol, because i like to watch everyone suffer in a universe of my own making, but mostly nice things because i am old and my heart cannot take much more, fairy tale slash epic au, other characters will be added as they appear - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 19:01:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20783540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haruun/pseuds/haruun
Summary: A strange rumour has been spreading from a far corner of the world. Whispers telling of an ancient evil in the forest, a darkness that feeds on brave men and heralds the great reckoning of mankind.The bounty hunter believes in neither. But aimless, alone and hungry, she packs up her few belongings, plucks the paper from the notice board and heads west in search of a demon, a doom, or nothing at all.[Fairy Tale AU]





	O, restless warrior

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'ed, so an entirely self-motivated venture which... is yikes. This is a fairy-tale based fantasy AU because I like to make up big stories and stick people in it to make them squeal :D It's been a long time since I've written fic, but I hope its enjoyable somehow!
> 
> Ratings, pairings, characters and warnings will all be updated once I, uh, come to them.

Once upon a time, there was a King who lived in a castle. And in time, that castle, along with its Lord, fell into ruin.

As spake in the myths of yore, there once existed a hero of noble soul and godly strength who strode through the world as if it were his own, until one day all the three headed beasts and vicious serpents of the world had been smote down, and the hero too, found his name faded into obscurity.

Writ in the lines of an ancient history, there once stood a mighty nation with a Conqueror at its helm, and his empire spread from his influence until even their very scrolls were crafted from the finest sheets of gold. When his great-grandchild failed his line, those too, dissolved along with the glittering halls until all was no more.

Since time immemorial, glory, fame and greatness even that of the Gods, have proven themselves naught more but wisps in the wind. The only things that remain, are the stories.

Tales of fallen heroes and evil witches, songs of lost princesses and skeletal dragons, and when their names became lost to time, they were christened with new ones, and through them their spirits lived on in vivid flickers around the campfires that blazed in the evening gloom. There, their lives are shared with the young on broad laps as they watch the shadows dance at the beckoning of the words; the legend of an aged forest with twisted roots and hidden secrets, and even the sickly babe cradled in its mother’s arms can dream of the heavens.

From their elders they learned of a place that the Goddess herself had neglected to purge with her righteousness, bidding its mystery to stand against the tides of both man and time, and stood as the last bastion for those which could only remain unnamed. Fear in the flesh, terrors that stalked through the days indiscriminately, wisps that drove even the purest of men mad with their own imaginations. A bold, fierce tale of a timeless unknown in a world shrinking arounds its inhabitants with each discovery. The last haven for the primordial beasts of the void and the treasure trove of all their childhood nightmares.

But, with age and knowledge of the world, the stories around the campfire gradually shifted into forms that reflected both their listeners and their tellers. The metamorphosis trickles along each night: when the young pick up their first weapon, starves through their first night, loses their first friend and hears their first scream from a stranger’s lips. For the day must arrive when a child comes face to face with evil in another and with the shedding of their innocence, recognizes it in themselves. They will pass through sites so barren and depraved that their fears forget entirely the imaginings of spindly fingers and mutated trees. They will live through nights where no story can do mankind justice, and the young, now for good or ill are wiser, older, and sitting on their own logs, understand the bitter silence and the hollow gazes of those who used to make a dance of witches.

The truth was, before the embers of change had begun to lick at the edges of the world, there had once been a way of things. Although time took from its subjects its due, it also gave in return. The campfire the levity of a family’s laughter would grow scarcer but there would still be a campfire, and there still was a forest in which they could take shelter and in their darkest moments find consolation in each other.

Those were days long gone.

The old trees under which they sought shelter were hewn and stretches of unmappable forests were burned to the ground. The skies turned grey with the ashes of both man and beast, and the cracks in the world began to tremble. The order of the past had been scorched away in a trial of fire, and what remained were but embers, and in each ghostly tale shared, the villains now wore a difference face. A face of no face at all, an empty page behind a metal helmet, eyes soulless and glowing as they marched spiritless across the land at the behest of a new ruler, the champion of change. Bands grew fewer and far between, and as the groups with purchasable loyalties found themselves more frequently held at knifepoint, the number of lone rangers increased. Those with children held their tongues and settled down in rural work, and those who had lived through too much to rebuild their lives around a hearth continued through the wastes, plucking work from wherever they could.

Time would not spare livelihoods, and even families and blood-bonds could be broken against its tide. But those who had once watched their loved once dance around a fire, and now kept their silence, they did not forget the old wisdom their loved ones had left with them.

Glory, power and tyrants: they all shall fade. Everything should crumble into dust, and only the stories will remain.

And in the thick musk of an old village inn by the edge of the world, a lonely figure sat hunched over her plain porridge and dried meats. There was little she kept with her with the exception of that old acumen, and although the bench at which she ate was placed in the middle of the hall, it was deserted. Much like the innkeeper, the spread of customers had shifted away as sand into clumps for they too had grown to stay vigilant for the scent of danger. It followed like a film of oil that clung to the blade which sullied those by association, and a sword without allegiance was one that brought with it the darkest of shadows.

However, there still remained one soul under that grim roof whom the hooded figure did not frighten. The barkeep had watched as their other customers migrated away from the stranger as if escaping from a miasma, and when the flow of requests for ale and mead had slowed enough for her to truly observe, she carefully came to a decision. She filled a small glass from her own bottle of tonic from behind the counter strode out. The back of her neck prickled with a dozen damning stares, but they were all ignored.

When she reached the occupied seat, she set the glass down with a firm, unyielding clack on the wooden bench. The stranger glanced up with a faint breath of surprise on their lips, and the barkeep couldn’t help but smile at it. The mystery man was a woman.

“Here you are,” said the barkeep. “It’ll help, wherever you’re headed.” With a moment of hesitation, the stranger glanced back down at the glass of clear liquid for a closer inspection. “It’s just tonic,” the barkeep adds, “you look rather worn down, so I thought it might do you some good.”

There was a long pause, but at its end the stranger reached out a gloved hand for the tonic and drained it steadily. The barkeep’s smile burst across her face in relief. Indeed, any stranger, no matter how dangerous, was still human. And there was nothing some strong medicine and good conversation couldn’t fix.

Then, the stranger spoke. “Thank you,” she said, and the voice behind the rugged gear was soft, deep and gravelly. The words shifted her mouth oddly enough that it gave the impression of having forgotten how to form them. “Do you charge for information?”

“Well—” the barkeep shot a quick glance at the muttering innkeeper in his corner. The stranger followed her gaze. “I’ll make an exception for you,” the barkeep answered, and slid into the empty seat opposite. “What is it you want to know?”

“Has there been any rumours recently, surrounding the Donndubhan Wilds?”

The barkeep blinked, confused. “Rumours, about the Laughing Woods? When is there ever a lack of rumours about that ghastly place? For every customer we receive, another mad tale follows.”

The stranger remained unmoved. “Reports of recent activity, then. Unnatural activity that you might consider credible. Any strange sounds at night or men found missing?”

“I… well,  _ yes _ , but—look,” the barkeep stopped, and the stranger waited as she shuffled closer in and hissed urgently: “I’d tell you, I really would, but with the innkeeper watching us—he’d be furious if he found out I was talking about this at all.”

“ _ With good reason. _ ”

The stranger could only watch as the colour fled from the barkeep’s face in a single breath. She leapt to her feet with nimbleness that she did not look to have, shame smeared liberally across her brow. There the innkeeper stood behind her, towering over his short employee, and a thunderous look darkened his otherwise generous countenance.

“You can’t deny that I give you plenty of freedom, girl,” the innkeeper fumed, “but I do, at the very least, expect you to follow the one, single,  _ bloody _ order I give you!”

“She—she’s not—she’s the good sort, uncle, I’m sorry, but—”

“The  _ good sort _ ?” Then, the innkeeper turned on the stranger, with fire between his teeth. It mattered not to him if this person was a saint reborn—they were all fools, behind all that bluff and bluster. All death-seeking imbeciles who had not once ever spoken up on behalf of his niece each time she got caught standing up for them. They all sat there, like gargoyles, as he rained down upon them his fury. “Let me tell you one thing. People like you—you’re all the same bloody sort. Greedy, blood-lusting  _ beasts _ . Your manners and silence mean less than the dirt you stand on when you march in here with a sword at your side, hunting calamities you understand nothing of!”

The barkeeper’s face had flushed a bright red and she looked as if she were on the verge of tears. “Uncle, please—this isn’t the way—”

The stranger rose to her feet. Whatever was about to be said was lost as the other two watched with bated breath, but all the stranger did was to slide two silver coins beside the empty tonic glass.

“I understand,” she said. “And for your troubles.”

Without another word, she gathered her meagre belongings and made to exit. As she turned, a stale gust of air caught the edge of her hood, and the barkeep found her gaze held for the briefest of moments by a sharp glare of blue. But it was for a moment only and disappeared back underneath the tattered cloak.

Although the inn had long fallen into a sepulchral silence, not a single sound could be heard from the shadowy figure that slipped out of the hall, up the winding stairs, and out of sight.

The following morning, before the moon had its chance to finish its course across the sky, the room the stranger had occupied left no trace that there had been a single soul in it. The mists veiling the surrounding woods had some time yet before they were to lift, and the hours before the world began to stir was the opportune moment for the stranger to slip away from her unwelcome patronage.

Beside the stable, she stopped for a final check of her things. Her satchel was there, full of provisions she had easily pried from the cook and she patted her pockets in search for the small pouch of medicinal herbs she kept on her always.

“I thought these might help,” came a small voice.

The stranger looked up, and from a shadowed corner emerged the barkeep. In one outstretched hand sat a small pouch held out in offering whilst she grasped nervously at the fabric of her skirts with the other. Gently, as if not to spook the girl, the stranger reached out and plucked the pouch from the trembling fingers.

“It’s very early,” she said finally. “Your uncle would not be pleased to discover your room unoccupied.”

The girl’s neck flushed with pink, but the determined press of her lips did not falter. “I didn’t wish for you to leave without a goodbye,” she insisted. “It would be unkind, for where you are headed.”

There was a long pause, until suddenly the stranger reached up for the dark fabric that obscured much of her face and slowly, pulled it down. The fog of the morning seemed to swirl around the very strands of her hair as the icy, periwinkle eyes set themselves on the barkeep with neither pretence or deceit.

When the barkeep saw, she drew in the deep breath she had previously never thought herself brave enough to take.

“They say it’s a fallen spirit,” she began in a hushed voice. “That it’s looking for revenge. I do not know which story is true and which isn’t, but I do know that ever since the legends were stirred up again, quite a few men from far-flung places have come in these past months asking after the same thing. One by one they left the inn before dawn broke, and none have returned. Not one.” She peered up at the upper floor of the inn, to the darkened window that belonged to the innkeeper.

“My uncle believes in the old wives’ tale,” she said. “It says that great tragedy should befall those who disturb the evil in those woods. That’s why he hates mercenaries so—they’re the only ones who ever come by our inn to ask about the forest. We’re at the very edge of it, after all.”

“I am no mercenary,” said the stranger.

The quick look that the barkeep gave the sword hanging from the stranger’s belt quickly ascertained her opinion of that claim, but her smile was kind.

“You don’t appear to be someone who would allow her mind to be changed simply at an ordinary girl’s word, so I won’t attempt it. Just… take care, alright?” The barkeep cast her eyes down at her shoes, and although her expression was hidden by the gloom, the compassion in her voice was clear. “If you make it out alive,” she said, “come back to the inn. I’ll make sure we throw a feast in celebration of your safe return.”

The edges of the stranger’s lips curled up. It was with great effort and awkward and disused, but it was a warm smile, nonetheless.

With no small wonder, the barkeep thought to herself that it lit up her entire countenance. Almost as if she were transformed into a proper human instead of a phantom of the night.

“Thank you,” the stranger offered in her soft, gravelly tone.

The barkeep nodded and took a step back with a wave goodbye. She was allowed a final glimpse of the odd smile before it vanished with a diminutive dip of the head. The mask was slid back into place once again.

The stranger’s heavy-set boots made no sound on the dewy grass, and if not for the view of her receding back, wrapped in a battered black cloak, the barkeep would never have noticed the departure until the stranger was long gone.

She did her best to fend away the memories of all the other figures that had once retreated from the inn in a similar fashion; their broad and lonely shoulders vanishing into the distance, never to be seen again by another living soul. Indeed, she could feel it—that this stranger would be different. She must, for if she did not hold onto hope for these lost souls of the world, who would?

She was shocked out of her reverie when there was suddenly a voice, distant but clear, and the barkeep would have dismissed it as her own imaginings if not for the figure in the distance, stopped in their tracks and turned halfway back to face her.

The thickness in her throat dislodged itself and in a moment of lunacy, she threw all caution into the wind.

“ _ Again! _ ” She called through her cupped hands, “I couldn’t hear—”

“Your name!” The stranger repeated. “Your name!”

“ _ Annette _ !”

Would she remember, she found herself wondering. What use would there be? A name would not save her from the paralysis of fear, and would not the first plea from her lips be for a loved one?

Yet, when the stranger gave a deep nod and a gentle wave of her hand, half sunken into fog, Annette realized that against all odds, and without a single sound reason, that her name was not going to be forgotten.

And, almost as inconspicuously as she had come, the stranger wove her way through the first wave of twisted bark and dissolved into the beckoning hands of the forest.


End file.
